


My Senses Ensnared

by thisiszircon



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, HP: EWE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 06:06:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9165391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisiszircon/pseuds/thisiszircon
Summary: Hermione discovers for herself the most sensual organ of the human body.





	

The flickering flame from a single candle formed a globe of illumination in the otherwise darkened room.

The edges to this globe were hazy and indistinct.  Beyond them, it felt as if the entire universe had receded.  People, places, planets: all of it was gone.  Only this was left: this limited patch of orange-tinted light, and the wooden counter over which she leaned, and the beaten zinc plating with its blue-grey patina which covered the wall beyond.

And Hermione.

(Two Hermiones, perhaps.  Herself, and the blurred reflection staring back at her from the wall.)

Oddly, she still wore her night clothes: a thin-strapped singlet and loose trousers.  But the room was surprisingly warm, in spite of those dark, empty, hollow depths beyond the extent of the candle's light.  It smelled rich and potent: old wood, a thousand different plants, the acrid tang of dried fauna.  Metal and flame and magic.

"The mistake most often made in the artistry of potions," came a deep, masculine, precisely spoken voice, "is the importance placed upon sight."

Hermione peered into the polished metal that reflected her face, but she could see no one standing behind her.  This, in spite of her conviction that the lips forming these words rested mere inches from her ear.  She shivered lightly.

"Sight matters, of course," the voice went on.  "An ability to distinguish small differences in hue, overtones and undertones, shimmers or their absence – this _is_ a necessary skill."

"Yes," she whispered, nodding, understanding.  Her reflection offered no corresponding movement; even her lips were still.  Like it was a picture, a portrait, and not a reflection at all.

"Potions, well prepared, are objects of beauty," her disembodied companion said.  "Their beauty should be appreciated."  A beat.  "Embraced."

"Yes," she repeated, still whispering, understanding a little more.

There came the softest exhalation: almost amusement, almost a sigh.  Hermione strained to feel that breath against her skin, though she did so in vain.  Did this man have the smallest idea of the effect his voice could have?  Surely he must; surely he recognised the potency of his strongest feature.  That opening speech, offered so very long ago in her first year at school, had been designed to make the most of it.

"And by the way," she added, "you had me at 'subtle science'."

"Hmm?"

"Never mind.  Please go on."

"Hmm."  The air shifted against Hermione.  "Naturally, it is easier to apply oneself when the focus of one's craft is beautiful."  And now an inhalation: deep and thoughtful.  "But the sense of sight is only a small part of the process.  To craft something truly exquisite, one has to rely on so much more."

"Tell me," she murmured.

"Scent," the voice stated.  "Perhaps the most powerful of all the senses.  Substantially more sensitive than sight.  Your craft requires precision, and your vision can play tricks on you.  The quality of light, for instance, might alter the colours in your cauldron.  But your sense of smell will never be deceived.  It is pure.  Honest."

The sound of a footstep.  Hermione wasn't sure why she couldn't turn around; she just knew that it was vital she did not.  She gave up her search for her visitor's reflection and closed her eyes.  She drew a breath, slow and luxurious, through her nose.  The complex swirls of fragrance embedded into the fixtures and fittings of the room were considered and then set aside: the background against which something more important was sought.

Another breath.  She moistened her lips, centred herself, strove to learn.

There.  Just at the edge of her olfactory sense: something familiar, something she knew.  Something she was coming to appreciate beyond all expectation.  It carried the hint of a spice, like cardamom, and wood – though nothing obvious like cedar or sandalwood, but rather the fragrance of a bamboo grove – with something bitter and heavy underlying it all.  It wasn't quite beautiful, but it was needful, and so very exciting.

"Yes," the voice said.  "I am here."

"I could breathe you in," she whispered back.

"You can, and you shall."  A pause, then, with just a small measure of impatience, "I shall continue."

Hermione smiled into the sightless, fragrant landscape her mind had mapped out.  "Please do."

"Taste comes later," he told her.  "But not so much later as some think.  Many potioneers consider this aspect of brewing to be the merest adjustment at the end of the process.  Something to make palatable their products.  Overwhelm the taste buds with citrus or mint, and your market will expand."

"You don't approve."

"I don't _dis_ approve, unless the potion is compromised.  But the acidity of lemon can do more harm than good.  More palatable does not always mean better, if the efficacy of your potion matters to you."

She nodded.

"Does the efficacy matter to you, Hermione?" asked Severus Snape.

She smiled at the metaphor they were building.  "Yes.  Yes, it does."

"Then your sense of taste must remain refined.  Lemon and mint are well and good, but there are other flavours besides.  Never compromise the sensitivity of your tongue.  Do not train it to appreciate only the common and the uncomplicated."

"I understand."

"Good.  Then you will know the difference between adequacy and excellence."

Quite the promise.  Funny, how she did not doubt him in the slightest.

"Touch," Snape told her in a voice that lowered in timbre and volume, "should not be ignored, either."

"I do hope not," she whispered.

He hummed, just briefly.  "Your fingers should know your subject as well as your eyes.  Learn the contours of everything you need to use.  Learn your craft so well you can undertake it blindfold, from the earliest preparations to the coaxing and the stirring as your potion simmers and quickens."

Things were quickening, all right.  Her heart rate; her breath.  Her imagination.

Her libido.

"Sometimes," he said in that irresistible voice, "it will be effortless.  Smooth and easy.  Sometimes you'll require a firmer hand."  He made no attempt to disguise the innuendo.  "It might even be challenging – to the extent that your breath will grow rapid and your skin will shine with perspiration."  He paused to take a breath, and the breath stuttered before he found composure again.  "The art of potions can be physical indeed."

She trembled.  "Yes."

"Yes."  A sigh.  "And then – to complete the set – even your ears must play their part.  The crackle of a dried leaf must be just so.  The grind – oh, the insistent grind of the pestle against the smooth curve of the mortar – that should be a sound that soothes and cajoles."

"Perhaps more cajoling than soothing, right at this moment," she said tightly.

His humour was only murmured.  "Quite so.  But the song of a cauldron, as its simmer blends with the rhythm of a stirring rod – this melody must be pitch-perfect."

The words were becoming less important than the voice that spoke them.  Hermione tried to nod, but the vibrations in the air caused by Snape's speech were fluttering against her skin like the fingertips of a lover.

"Review for me, then," Snape's voice said, somewhere between an instruction and a request.  "Let us recap."

Her eyes blinked open.  She could see him in the zinc wall-cladding now.  Behind her, no more than a dark man-shaped shadow, stood her friend and her teacher.  Almost formless, but so palpably present.  Gooseflesh shivered over her skin.  Hermione sensed a tightening at her nipples and a quiver at her core.

"You're really here," she whispered.

"Where else would I be?  Please.  Summarise for me."

"Sight," she said.  "I should know the subtleties to look for, and I should appreciate what I see."

"Beauty," Snape agreed.  "Like the warm glow of candlelight on smooth skin.  One cannot help but feel...motivated."

For a moment she saw through his eyes: the way the half-light caught and shone on the tiny hairs that dusted her upper arms.  The shivers she gave that made each tiny hair prickle itself erect.  Action; reaction.  A building tension.

"Oh," she breathed.

"Mmm.  Continue."

What came next?  "Scent," she remembered.  "I should learn to navigate the complex layers of fragrance.  To trust in that sense when my eyes might fail me."

"Such a powerful sense," he murmured.

She felt the air compress between them as she waited for a touch that did not come.  Her hands, resting on the counter, pressed down hard.  She wanted to turn and reach, but it was not permitted.  It would break the moment, and she did not want this moment to be over.

Still, her growing arousal made her reckless.  "I know your scent," she claimed.  "I could find you in a room of hundreds, with my eyes closed."

"Is that so?" he countered, amusement and pleasure and just a hint of challenge.

"Yes."

"Describe it.  Describe the scent that is Severus Snape."

She breathed, concentrated, considered a concept that was more abstract than language.  "An earthiness, like good soil," she decided, "then notes of spice and wood and-and...greenness."

"Greenness?"

"I have the scent in mind," she said, a little crossly.  "I don't necessarily have the words."

"Of course."

"And a hint of bitterness, like a tannic wine or-or over-roasted coffee, but alongside the other notes it feels right.  It feels...balanced."

"You're going to need a name for this cologne," he said.  "Perhaps 'Contradiction'?  Or 'Dilemma'?  But I can't wait to see the marketing campaign."

"You're teasing me now."

"Does that concern you?"

"Not in the slightest."

Something whispered against the sensitive skin behind her ear.  "No, I can smell your lack of concern," Snape murmured.  "Yours is a heady scent.  The bergamot in your lotion.  The heat of your body.  And the delicate, honeyed musk of your arousal."  A deeply drawn breath.  "Is this for me, Hermione?  This reckless, unapologetic excitement?"

"You know it is."

"Ah."

"Well, you said scent was honest," she reminded him, curiously uninhibited by the way her body had betrayed her.  "Does it concern _you_?"

"Hardly."

"And could you find me in a room of hundreds?"

"Blindfold," Snape agreed.  "With remarkable alacrity."

She smiled.  Leaned back.  Ached, when there was nothing to press against.  "And what would you do when you found me?"

A pause.

"And after scent?" he prompted, as if she had not asked the question.

She let out a breath of mild disappointment, but allowed him to steer their conversation.  "Taste comes later," she said.  "But not too much later, I hope."

"Hmm – perhaps not."

Something tingled against the lobe of Hermione's right ear, but when she gasped and turned her head she met empty space.

"Severus?" she asked.

"Not too much later," he promised.  "I find my restraint is ever more tested."

Hermione was becoming intoxicated by the air and the scents and the mood in this room.  "I want this."

"If you did not, we would not be here."

She nodded at herself and her shadowed companion, and she let her eyes fall closed.  "Then you should touch me."

"I should?"

"We're at 'touch' now.  In the review."

"Ah."

A pause.  He was making her wait; it was almost unbearable.  Hermione leaned hard against the counter and tried not to tremble.  Certain muscles in her body were attempting to undulate, to clench and release, to find a rhythm that might be enough to provide a sort of friction.

"Would it please you if I begged?" she asked, a little bit harshly.

He chuckled low, at that.  "You do not need me to answer that."

She thought for a moment.  The thoughts swirled and slipped from her grasp in this heady, insubstantial space, but she knew enough to recognise he was right.  What was needed, here, was something balanced.  Something well-matched: where challenge could be met with challenge in humour and safety and trust.

"I understand enough," she said.

"I believe that you do.  I hope I can reciprocate."

"I have much greater faith in you than you have in yourself."

"I know."

Another pause.  Hermione drew breath, to try to move this exotic, erotic conversation along, but that breath caught and stuttered when her hair was moved aside and the gentlest of caresses came upon the back of her neck.

"Touch," he said softly.

The muscles in her stomach creased, like she needed to curl up, but she resisted the urge.  Her hips pressed her hard against the wooden structure supporting the counter, though the wood was softened and gave against her body.  She couldn't quite find enough pressure where she needed to feel it.

The caress drifted away, and she tried to collect her thoughts, but when the touch of a finger was replaced by the brush of ardent lips, her thoughts fled and she could only gasp.  The simmering excitement in her body surged and spiked.  Her breath caught again, and she dragged in the honeyed air along with a tiny groan of pleasure.

"Yes," Snape's voice announced, its own tremor newly apparent.  "As you remind us both: finally, there is sound."

Another kiss.  Hermione breathed hard for a few seconds, then she said, "It started there.  With you."

"Mmm...sound?"

"Before I knew I wanted you.  Before I knew I could like you."  She gave a breathless laugh.  "Even before I hated you."

"Ah."

"Before all that, there was your voice."

"I see."  He stopped her as she tried to reach behind.  "Be still.  It's for you.  All for you."

"I need this."

"Then tell me – will it be enough, now?" he asked.  "This voice of mine?  An accident of genetics, just like your absurd hair and your astonishingly beautiful skin: is it enough?"

"I want more."

"As do I.  But in this moment, as you tremble and writhe and glow in the candlelight, is it enough?"

"Almost."

"Then what more do you need me to give you?"

Her legs shook with the implications of the question and she had to lock her knees tight.  This small, half-lit sanctuary displaced from the darkness beyond was suddenly thick with need and with lust.  Hermione's nerve-endings thrummed.  Her nipples rubbed against the fabric that constrained them; her groin tried to find purchase against the counter.  The need to seek completion as that voice continued to murmur behind her ear was unquestionably urgent.

"Severus," she managed, half-choking on the word.

"I think," he said, even as she felt him step closer, "that I will have to spend the rest of our lives searching for the right words."

His fingertips grazed the tops of her arms, downwards, stroking shoulder to elbow and then lower still.  His hand found hers and coaxed it away from the counter.  She let him move her, complaining when he drew her away from the counter's edge only to groan relief as he pressed the heel of her hand between her thighs.  It was pressure enough, even as he leaned in and trapped her body between his own and the implausibly soft surface of the potions worktop.

Her eyes blinked open, just briefly, and she saw him watching her reflection.  The sight of his pale skin and dark eyes made her catch at her lip with her teeth, but there was no need for vision in this interlude.  She shuttered that particular sense once more.

"Because there must be words that are right," Snape went on, that fluid baritone of his straining with his own arousal.  "Words that require nothing but themselves.  Words which might take the essence of Hermione Granger and make her sing, make her resonate..."

Hermione moaned out loud.  Her body found a rhythm, pitching and rolling against the friction of her own hand.  Snape's body was heavy at her back.  One of his hands skimmed the sensitised skin of her neck, the other moved back up her arm only to swerve inside and then sweep fingertips over her breast.  Her answering gasp of pleasure was raw with passion.

"Yes," he seemed to agree.  His voice was languid and seductive now, somehow offering a further edge to the physical friction she'd found.  "Words that make her tremble.  Words that make her vibrate in such a stimulating, stirring, sensual way that every single exquisite particle of her flutters and strains...yes...and then flies apart...oh, yes...in a mad, delirious, frenzy of pleasure..."

He tweaked her nipple, bit softly at her neck, groaned low in his throat as he did so.  Hermione's body shuddered against her hand and then convulsed as climax possessed her.  She came with a hoarse cry and then a long, throaty groan as pleasure washed up and down and along and through.

"Severus," she whispered into the cotton that pressed against her face and made her breath feel hot.

"Patience, Hermione," he whispered back...

...as she awoke.

And he was gone.  No more sensation.  No more weight at her back.

No more counter; no more candlelight.

Just the familiar contours of her bed in Grimmauld Place, and the rub of soft bed linens on her face, and the slightly awkward awareness that she had been humping her own right hand in her dream.  She twisted over on to her back.  Her panted breathing slowed.  There was a trace of perspiration on her upper lip that cooled in the air of her bedroom.

Hermione reminded herself that it was August.  Her lessons with Severus Snape had yet to resume.  Since his clearance of all charges before the Wizengamot and his discharge from hospital last month, she had not seen him.  All that her subconscious had just thrown at her was merely the product of an overactive imagination.

Still...

She smiled into the darkness of her bedroom.  As with all dreams, the details already eluded her, but if the fantasy had prompted her to reach orgasm then it couldn't have been half bad.  And if she couldn't expect Snape himself to participate in such moments of abandoned passion – at least for the time being – then the version her subconscious had created would do nicely.

Her thoughts drifted with half-remembered eroticism, right up until the point something hammered on her bedroom door.

"You all right?" Harry demanded.  "I heard a scream."

A scream, was it?  Definitely a good fantasy, then.

"I'm fine," she called back.  "Just a dream."

"Want me to put the kettle on?" Harry said from beyond the door.  It was what they always did, when one of them had nightmares.  It had become their rule: no one suffers alone.  Not even at three o'clock in the morning.  "It's almost dawn anyway."

"Go back to sleep," she said.  "It's Saturday.  And I'm okay."

Harry acknowledged this and wandered back off to his bed.  Hermione sighed, ignoring the way her face had flushed hot in recent minutes, and gave brief consideration to casting a Patronus and sending it to Severus Snape.  She wondered how he'd react to the appearance of an ethereal figure at the end of his bed announcing, in Hermione Granger's voice, that she had just had a truly delicious dream about him...

No.  Probably not.

Not yet, anyway.

She closed her eyes and relaxed.  Time for some more sleep.  And if she thought about that insanely sonorous voice with enough focus, perhaps she could make sure that her dreams were not quite so lonely as her bed currently seemed to be...

~~~~~~

**Author's Note:**

> This brief and inconsequential interlude can be considered a part of the events growing from [Cold Hearts and Muddy Understandings](http://http://archiveofourown.org/works/8306873), taking place some weeks after that story's epilogue. Alternatively, treat it as a stand-alone. Whichever works best for you.
> 
> Rating stories can be a tricky business. My own opinion is that there is nothing in the above unsuitable for a simple 'mature' rating. I have, however, chosen to rate the story as explicit because I have known readers become outraged when they realise that the moment of intimacy being described is not, in fact, going to end with a tasteful fade. This outrage can become vitriolic if I have had the audacity to refer to a nipple. Or two. (Or several.) "I don't read smut and you made me!" is the basic complaint.
> 
> It is very hard to please all the people, all the time.
> 
> I therefore occasionally rate my stories on the side of caution. I make this note here to say - if you chose to read this story in the hope of more earthy and vivid sexual descriptions, and I have managed to disappoint, my apologies.


End file.
